Over the course of the tournament, I have taken an interest in the vagabond quest deck. Every quest requires two items from the potential available eight. And I was really curious to see what that make up was like. Especially in relationship to the suits of the decks. This is important since you need to be in a matching clearing to complete the quest. My question turned into: which clearing has the easiest quests to complete? Also, which vagabonds are best for completing quests? The answers… probably won’t surprised you.
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Like I said before, there are eight items available to the Vagabond at any given time (above). Each item has their own unique ability besides being in quests. The list below is simplified because I don’t know the exact wording of the Vagabond:
- Coins: Allows the Vagabond to draw more cards during your evening phase
- Crossbow: Allows the Vagabond to remove an enemy piece from the board
- Hammer: Allows the Vagabond to craft an item matching the suit of the clearing you are located
- Torch: Allows the Vagabond to explore ruins
- Sword: Allows the Vagabond to initiate battles, counts as number of potential hits
- Tea: Allows the Vagabond to refresh more items during the birdsong phase
- Bag: Allows the Vagabond to hold more items in the satchel. Alternatively, allows the vagabond to have a higher limit before discard items in evening.
- Boot: Allows the vagabond to move between locations
After combing the deck, I discovered the each suits needs the follow items to fully complete every quest in that suit:
- Fox: Torch, Tea, Boot, Hammer, Bag, Coins
- Rabbit: Torch, Tea, Sword, Sword, Boot, Crossbow
- Mouse: Torch, Bag, Sword, Sword, Boot, Boot, Crossbow
I noticed something a little interesting while looking at this. A vagabond would only need six items in total to complete the full set of quests from the fox or the rabbit suited clearing. But, they would need seven items to complete all of the quests in the mouse suited clearings. To offset that (in my opinion), the mouse clearing does not require any tea which is huge since tea is a highly valuable item.
To break it down further, I looked into the number of items required by quests in each suite. I was surprised to see that two items were required in three quests in different suits. It seemed like a lot considering how underutilized the bag, crossbow, coins, and hammer are. I also looked at item combinations needed for quests. Only three quests required a unique item combination.
One kind of funny observation I had while putting this together is how peaceful the fox quests were. It’s a suit required to craft the aggressive items: the sword and the crossbow. Yet, it uses none of those items for quests. It is also the only suit that requires the coins and the hammer for quests. The fox quests are the hardest in the deck to accomplish. The hammer has better uses and the coins do not get crafted until late game.
OH DEAR LORD THAT TORCH. So one big thing that I do not like about the quest deck is the consistent need for the torch. It is required for seven out of the 15 quests. That’s almost half! And there is only one that the vagabond has access to (unless they are the adventurer). In the first half of the game, the vagabond is using the torch to explore ruins. And if the quest splay is fully of cards needed the torch – that’s not good. It basically locks Vagabonds out of doing quest which seemed to necessary for their point engine if you’re playing with the despot infamy rule variant.
For those who don’t know, despot infamy mimics the scoring the Eyrie despot leader. In rules as written, the Vagabond receives a number of points equal to the pieces removed plus an additional point per building and tokens. Using the despot infamy rule, the Vagabond receives one point any time a piece is removed plus an addition point per building and token removed.
So many quests need the tea, boot, and swords to accomplish quests. The graphs above to do not count double items. If there are two of the same items used in a quest, it is only listed once.
I was curious which Vagabond could come out of the gate completely quests like a madman. The thief is currently the OP Vagabond in terms of completing quests with their opening hand. They can complete six quest using a combination of their open items (this would be over several turns). Conversely, the vagrant cannot complete any quests from their opening items. It’s really something to think about when choosing to play the Vagabond.
The reason the fox quests are “peaceful” is because each suit is focused toward the kind of tasks that type of animal needs help with. Foxes are already the best fighters, so they don’t need help expelling bandits or fending off bears — but apparently they’re not very good at fundraising or repairing sheds.